[Joseph Tracy]

Is Trump still working within the allowable parameters of the deep state? Is most of what he does perfectly acceptable to the greater powers that can very easily and without a partisan coup step in and kill or depose him if he grabs for absolute dictatorial power. Would the military be disunited in assuming the right to place such a limit and make it clear to the idiot Trump that he is not going to be King for too long.  

I am not invoking a unified conspiracy theory here, just the overlapping interests of people who, no matter how deranged as individuals, do not want to start a civil war, which is where such a power grab in this gun rich country is likely to go. 

How, I wonder, would such a dangerous and foolish power grab play out if it got off the ground?  In Vermont the Trump supporters all have guns, but so do many who hate him.  Having the extreme loyalty of a relatively small percent of far righters is far from enough to overthrow a blue state government let alone the US government.  Still things are very bad considering the police actions in charleston or with the occupy movement. Many police forces could go with Trump in a civil war.  We could easily have a horrible bloodbath  or a fast division between red states and blue states. Anything remotely like that would be a constitutional crisis and a global crisis.

The question that no one seems willing to engage with is what is a military empire with bases around the world and the largest military in history? Is that a democratic republic? A country able to threaten Europe into supporting the continuation of sanctions on Iran after we broke the treaty which they supported?Considering the recent history of wars of aggression by this empire  and its continuing habits of racism, internationl bullying, its support of dictators, its persecution of water protectors and occupiers and black voters how is that empire not the 4th Reich? Do they need the arm bands or are the miniflags enough? Exactly how many dead bodies and invasions are required? How thorough the surveillance?  Most of the lines that used to be invoked were crossed in the wake of 911.

The polls show there appears to be a good chance dems will take the house in 2018 and a slight chance to take the senate.  How much restraint can be put on Trump? Without both houses and some serious use of the power of the purse, not all that much. The courts are stacked against it. Pelosi is a major liability, her support has negative effect for a candidate. The democrats need more than a facelift to excite young voters who understand what is at stake for their generation.  They also need to expand their base with real comittments to universal health-care, reduced military spending, a plan for making higher education affordable, for initiating a green economy, for making the rich pay taxes. What is the long term plan to build a Roosevelt style reform of the US government. Can the corporate media and corporate party system be changed for human survival? How humane is a liberal agenda that cannot stop the rape of the planet by corporate greed ?


 
> On Oct 29, 2018, at 8:37 AM, matthew cissell <mccissell at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Howdy Folks,
> 
> Are we all familiar with the Business Plot of 1933? That sure seems
> relevant, in that the roots of fascism have been there (US) for a while (we
> were no more immune to the ideas and trends that were in the air; I mean
> just think of Father Coughlin or that Bellamy salute).
> 
> Also, if you haven't read Robert Paxton's "Fascism", you should. The fellow
> knows what he's talking about. Early on, when Chump was a but a candidate,
> Paxton pointed out that Drumpf was at least quasi-fascistic. Perhap by now
> he has updated that diagnosis.
> 
> Of course it is also worth looking at Isaiah Berlin's work on the
> intellectual roots of fascism (Joseph de Maistre, but also the so-called
> Counter-Enlightenment thinkers like Herder and Hamman that left a path for
> the Frenchmen Charles Maurras and Maurice Barrès; on these last two one
> might peruse J.W Burrow's "The Crisis of Reason: European Thought 1848 -
> 1914).
> 
> That's my two bits on how history echoes all around.
> 
> ciao
> mc
> 
> On Fri, Oct 26, 2018 at 2:59 PM Becky Lindroos <bekah0176 at sbcglobal.net>
> wrote:
> 
>> You’re right about  It Can’t Happen Here much less of a novel than 1984.
>> It’s more like Aldous Huxley’s Island for all its pontificating.
>> 
>> The thing is that both the Lewis book and Trump fit the set of
>> similarities set forth by Albright (in “Fascism") which authoritarian
>> dictators use to attain power and keep it,  this is whether they are right
>> wing or left.   They attack media, free speech, certain minority groups
>> voting rules and the political opposition while tending to promote a
>> militaristic form of nationalism with no avoidance of violence on any level
>> and themselves as cult leader. They make up what they need as they go along
>> so each regime/leader is unique in its own specifics.
>> 
>> I’m still only about 1/2 way through.
>> 
>> Becky
>> https://beckylindroos.wordpress.com
>> 
>>> On Oct 25, 2018, at 11:38 PM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> 
>>> I learned of it in an even earlier political and reprint cycle, Nixon's,
>> of the late 60s-70s when I was a pup bookseller. Bet voracious reader, we
>> think, TRP
>>> has read it. (You can't read and love 1984 and miss this one, although
>> it is much less as a novel).
>>> 
>>> Just recently I got a copy of T. Harry Williams' HUGE biography of Huey
>> Long, the model. Surely won't read it all but from his Preface to the
>> paperback-that-hardly-holds together: ....TRP's/Weber's charisma is a
>> defining quality..."Long went much further than creating a political
>> "machine"--He was the first Southern leader, and very possibly the first
>> American leader, to set out not to contain the opposition or to impose
>> certain conditions on it, but to force it out of existence.
>> ....Deliberately, he grasped the control of all existing boards and other
>> agencies ..and then just as deliberately by creating new agencies to
>> perform new functions, he continually enlarged the patronage at his
>> disposal. His control of patronage, gave him control of the legislature,
>> and his control of the legislature enabled him to have laws enacted that
>> invested him with imperial authority over every level of local
>> government.........he became so powerful finally that he could deny the
>> opposition almost all political sustenance, and if he wished, destroy it.
>> .....but he did it differently. He created an arrangement in which the
>> survival of any opposing organization would have to come into his to
>> survive. He defined the terms and the rewards.  He also campaigned for
>> sympathetic judges and they were winning so, all three branches. And he had
>> effectively set it up before he died.
>>> 
>>> Arendt totalitarianism. What is at least at stake in the upcoming US
>> elections, as Trump has packed the Supremes, is still the patronage
>> President, the Senate--McConnell has surely studied Long's career-- will
>> probably not turn Dem therefore.......
>>> 
>>> On Thu, Oct 25, 2018 at 9:40 PM Becky Lindroos <bekah0176 at sbcglobal.net>
>> wrote:
>>> Yup -  but written in 1936 so Lewis would be limited in some ways
>> including the bomb as well as the environment.   Life is much more
>> dangerous for many more people now.  (But it was in the days of the Shrub,
>> too.)
>>> 
>>> I’ve read about some post-WWII and post-WWII totalitarian tactics and
>> strategies (Fascism by Madeleine Albright) and we’ll see how he does on
>> those. This was written in 1935,  way prior to Pearl Harbor.  just after
>> Hitler became Fuhrer.  I don’t know what I’m reading for - parallels to
>> current times or historical interest.
>>> 
>>> I read Lewis’ Main Street a few years ago.  It’ll be interesting if
>> nothing else.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> Becky
>>> https://beckylindroos.wordpress.com
>>> 
>>>> On Oct 25, 2018, at 3:08 PM, Mark Thibodeau <jerkyleboeuf at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>> I remember fifteen years ago, the LAST time It Can't Happen Here went
>>>> through a cycle of current-events-spawned popularity. It even had the
>>>> Dubya Bush / Buzz Windrip synchronistical nomenclature to help sell
>>>> its ostensibly prophetic nature.
>>>> 
>>>> It's a pretty good novel, very "readable", but the lack of nuclear
>>>> weapons in the mix means it can only go so far as a satire that can be
>>>> shoehorned over the contemporary realpolitik.
>>>> 
>>>> Jerky
>>>> On Thu, Oct 25, 2018 at 6:03 PM Becky Lindroos <
>> bekah0176 at sbcglobal.net> wrote:
>>>>> 
>>>>> Interesting as I’m just starting to read “It Can’t Happen Here”
>> (“What Will Happen When America Has a Dictator?”)  by Sinclair Lewis -
>> (1936).  A the time, the book was thought to be directed at Huey Long, a
>> Mississippi populist, governor/senator who was assassinated as he was
>> getting his campaign for president together.  Sinclair’s novel is a satire
>> and really aimed at its own times,  but it resonates what with all the
>> fictional Windrip does *after* he gains office.  (hush the critics, etc.)
>>>>> 
>>>>> "Keith Perry argues that the key weakness of the novel is not that he
>> decks out U.S. politicians with sinister European touches, but that he
>> finally conceives of fascism and totalitarianism in terms of traditional
>> U.S. political models rather than seeing them as introducing a new kind of
>> society and a new kind of regime.”
>>>>> 
>>>>> Also:
>>>>> "A number of writers have compared the demagogue Buzz Windrip to
>> Donald Trump. Michael Paulsonwrote in The New York Times that the Berkeley
>> Repertory Theatre's rendition of the play aimed to provoke discussion about
>> Trump's presidential candidacy.[2]”
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> And:
>> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/17/books/review/classic-novel-that-predicted-trump-sinclar-lewis-it-cant-happen-here.html
>>>>> 
>>>>> or:
>>>>> 
>> http://time.com/money/4573801/sinclair-lewis-it-cant-happen-here-amazon/
>>>>> 
>>>>> very curious -
>>>>> 
>>>>> Becky
>>>>> https://beckylindroos.wordpress.com
>>>>> 
>>>>>> On Oct 25, 2018, at 2:37 PM, Mark Thibodeau <jerkyleboeuf at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Nice.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> And true.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> J.
>>>>>> On Wed, Oct 24, 2018 at 3:09 PM David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> From Charles Pierce
>>>>>>> 
>> https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a24174810/cnn-obama-clintons-bomb-donald-trump/
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> "The bomb has been as essential a part of American political
>> history as
>>>>>>> were the knife, and the pistol, the high-powered rifle, and the
>> rope."
>>>>>>> --
>>>>>>> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>>>>>> --
>>>>>> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>>>>> 
>>> 
>>> --
>>> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>> 
>> --
>> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>> 
> --
> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l